An animated short about a lion cub raised among sheep who finds his courage when his adoptive mother is threatened. The central idea was Bill Peet's, though he was too busy with feature storyboards to develop it himself and another artist carried it to the screen.
Bill spoke about the short with some regret in a 1978 interview with Mike Barrier: "Lambert was another one that didn't turn out well, but it was an idea I'd had; I didn't get paid for that at all. Someone else finally developed it for the short subject. At that time, I was thinking of doing some story books, but I really didn't have the time, or the energy, for that matter. When you do thousands of drawings a year on storyboards, you just can't work nights and weekends that way."
His contribution
The premise of Lambert, a misfit lion raised as a sheep who must overcome ridicule to find his true nature, originated with Bill, though the demands of his feature storyboard work meant another artist developed it into the finished short. The "misfit who comes into his own" theme is unmistakably his, and points toward the picture books he would soon begin writing.
Story sketches
- RELEASED
- February 8, 1952
- DIRECTOR
- Jack Hannah
- BILL'S ROLE
- Original Story Idea
- RUNTIME
- 8 min